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Bridget Riley
This landmark book reflects on almost 70 years of works by Bridget Riley (b.1931), from some of her earliest to very recent projects, providing a unique record of the work of an artist still very much at the height of her powers. Essays from leading scholars and commentators on Riley's work will make this title the authority on Riley's practice. In the last decade, Riley has continued to push her practice considerably, producing several large-scale site-specific wall paintings as well as continuing to develop new paintings. This book will explore these recent developments. It will also examine the notable influence that other artists such as Georges Seurat and Piet Mondrian have had on Riley's work. essays by Bridget Riley, Robert Kudielka, Eric de Chassey, David Sylvester, Michael Bracewell, John Elderfield, Dave Hickey, Richard Shiff, among others. Published to accompany an exhibition taking place in the National Galleries of Scotland, running from June - September 2019.
280 pages, Hardcover
Published August 31, 2019
About the author
Bridget Riley
87 books12 followersBridget Louise Riley CH CBE (born 24 April 1931 in Norwood, London) is an English painter who is one of the foremost exponents of Op art. She currently lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France.
(from Wikipedia)
(from Wikipedia)
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May 31, 2021
Bridget Riley is a hard-edge abstractionist, painting in black and white, mostly using squares, circles and parallel lines as units in such a way that they seem to be jumping, flashing, bending. The disturbing element is not only imaginative in conception but has the sort of rightness in its placing that a good actor has in his timing - it seems at once unexpected and inevitable. This proposing and disposing of order seems no mere game with optical effects, seems to symbolize, dramatically, an interplay between feelings of composure and anxiety.
What are called 'optical effects' clearly play a crucial part in her procedures and in the impression her paintings convey. Her contribution to the whole field of optical art has, indeed, already been of vital importance. But in certain significant respects her aesthetic premises are different. Optical painting is obviously no more about optical effects than cubism is about cubes. Nor does it become more of a science and less of an art because of its experimental basis in the mechanics of perception. But the word 'optical' does tend, more than most of these mnemonic titles which so litter the history of 20th century art, to draw undue attention to means rather than ends. and it is the spectacular nature of the idiom to look as though it is insisting on a purely sensory response.
One of the most distinctive characteristics of Bridget Riley's art is that it 'insists' with such concentration that it changes sensory response into something else. The experience which Riley offers is closely related to the expression of emotion or, more exactly, to the creation of visual analogues for sharply particularized states of mind. The very intensity of the assault which her painting makes on the eye drives it, as it were, past the point at which it is merely a matter of optical effect.
What are called 'optical effects' clearly play a crucial part in her procedures and in the impression her paintings convey. Her contribution to the whole field of optical art has, indeed, already been of vital importance. But in certain significant respects her aesthetic premises are different. Optical painting is obviously no more about optical effects than cubism is about cubes. Nor does it become more of a science and less of an art because of its experimental basis in the mechanics of perception. But the word 'optical' does tend, more than most of these mnemonic titles which so litter the history of 20th century art, to draw undue attention to means rather than ends. and it is the spectacular nature of the idiom to look as though it is insisting on a purely sensory response.
One of the most distinctive characteristics of Bridget Riley's art is that it 'insists' with such concentration that it changes sensory response into something else. The experience which Riley offers is closely related to the expression of emotion or, more exactly, to the creation of visual analogues for sharply particularized states of mind. The very intensity of the assault which her painting makes on the eye drives it, as it were, past the point at which it is merely a matter of optical effect.
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